


February Words #2: Folk

by StaringAtTheTwinSuns



Series: February Words (2018) [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alderaan, Between ANH and ESB, Birthday, F/M, Gift Giving, Hoth, Leia's Pov, Luke's Poncho, M/M, Multi, OT3, Pre-OT3, Tatooine, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 02:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13560702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StaringAtTheTwinSuns/pseuds/StaringAtTheTwinSuns
Summary: Luke loans Leia the poncho he's had with him since Tatooine. Now Leia feels like she needs to repay him with a piece of home. But little does she know that Luke and Han are also planning a few surprises for her and Luke's shared birthday.





	February Words #2: Folk

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to part two of my February Words prompt challenge. Today's prompt was "Folk."
> 
> This is the first time in literally YEARS that I have broken 1000 words in a day, and it ended up being more like 2600. I'm pretty proud of that! That said, I did NOT end up having time to get a beta or to do much than a cursory editing pass. I think some of the dialogue's off (Leia and Threepio are challenging characters for me to write, but really all four of them might be a little OOC) and it all around might not be perfect... but such is the nature of a fic-a-day challenge!
> 
> This one's 99% from Leia's POV, and focuses MORE on the Luke/Leia relationship (as makes sense, IMO, at this point in canon?), but those looking for a bit of secret sweetness from Han won't be disappointed either. :)

~2 ABY~

Leia had exactly one thing to say about Hoth: It was cold.

She wasn’t honestly sure how Luke and Han were coping. Sure, Han complained, because he was Han and that was what he did, but she never caught his hands shaking or his teeth chattering like hers did, when she was fairly sure no one was watching. When she though it might be safe to drop the facade.

Luke, on the other hand, seemed utterly unfazed, which frustrated Leia a little. He was from a desert planet, wasn’t he? But he seemed so cheerful, so happy with nothing more than the Alliance-provided snowsuit, sometimes topped with this ratty old poncho he had brought with him from Tatooine.

“That looks warm,” Leia whispered, white-breathed, over one of the monitoring consoles.

“What, this?” Luke smiled, suddenly shy, running his fingers down the seam of the poncho. “My Aunt Beru made it for me.”

The sadness in his voice made Leia’s heart... vibrate, almost, like something striking an instrument at exactly the right place to make it sound. She had never known his Aunt Beru. But he’d lost her on the same day Leia had lost her parents, and that—together with their shared age and birthday, their escape from the Death Star, and a hundred other moments since then—made it feel like they belonged like this, together.

She met Luke’s eyes, then looked away, and the ensign who’d been monitoring the console sidestepped to the end of the station. Ever since Yavin the rest of the Alliance had been giving her and Luke as wide a berth as was possible in close quarters. The hero and the princess. She smiled to herself. Everyone seemed to want—to _expect_ —the two of them to become more.

“You can have it if you want.”

Luke’s voice broke her reverie, and before she really had time to think, to answer, he was wrapping the poncho around her shoulders. It was warm and just a little rough, and smelled like Luke—like he had smelled when she met him, and she guessed that mean it smelled like Tatooine.

“It’s warm.” She inwardly cringed at how childlike she sounded. Luke made her feel safe; that was dangerous, sometimes. They were still at war, and she was still a leader here. “I mean... I appreciate it. Thank you.”

Luke looked away, the smile on his face about as awkward as Leia felt. “It actually does get cold on Tatooine. I mean, we don’t go out much at night, because of the sand people. But when the suns go down—“

“Hey, Luke!”

Reflexively, Leia took a step back, away from Luke and toward the ensign. Leave it Han Solo to ruin... whatever this had been about to be.

“Captain Solo.” And just like that, her voice was cold and distant.

Han had told her last night that he was leaving. Again. And even though he hadn’t followed through on that promise yet, Leia didn’t want to let herself get too attached.

Luke, however, was a different story. “Han!” He cried, and the smile that lit his face was like the sun.

This was the real reason that Leia and Luke weren’t together. Han Solo’s presence... complicated things.

“Greetings, your worship.” Han turned to Leia, taking in the poncho and the expression on her face with a look that seemed to see into her soul. “That’s a new look,” he said. “I like it.”

“I was cold.” She made a show of rolling her eyes. “Luke loaned it to me, because he’s a gentleman. Unlike _some_ people I know.”

Han spread his arms wide, with a self-confident smirk that somehow made Leia want to kiss and slap him at the same time. “Hey, I’m a gentleman. General Rieekan was looking for Luke here, and I offered to go find him. That’s all. If I’d known I’d be in your royal presense...” He gave the poncho a pointed look. “I might have dressed for the occasion.”

“There will be no need for _that_ , Captain Solo.” She shrugged the poncho off her shoulders, but before she could hold it out to Luke, he shook his head.

“You keep it. It’s warmer in the speeders than it is here.”

“Thank you.” And she wrapped it back around her, and the world smelled like him again.

***

She knocked on the door to Luke’s quarters later that night, and heard Threepio answer from the other side.

“I’m afraid Master Luke is... indisposed at the moment.”

“I’m fine, Threepio,” Luke’s voice rang out. “Who is it?”

“It’s Leia.”

The doors swung open, revealing an obviously flustered C-3PO, and a tired-looking Luke wearing fluffy socks, pajama bottoms—and absolutely nothing above them.

“Come in,” he said, and waved her into his quarters. As if he wasn’t half-naked. Or didn’t care.

“I really just came to return this.” She held out the poncho, folded carefully into a square, and Threepio stepped forward to take it.

“Wait, Threepio,” Luke said, and then looked back at Leia. “You keep it.”

“I couldn’t.” Not when it was maybe the last he had of his Aunt Beru, or of the life he’d had before.

“Really,” he said. “I... I want you to have it.”

Leia hugged it to her chest. “Okay.”

***

She rarely wore the poncho in public. But she wore it in her chambers every day.

***

“Mistress Leia! Mistress Leia! Captain Solo said you were looking for me. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting. The floors around here are treacherous. I—“

Leia smiled. “Thank you, Threepio. I haven’t been waiting very long.”

“Oh.” This seemed to placate Threepio; he inclined his golden head toward her. “Captain Solo indicated that you had a job which only I would be able to perform.”

Not for the first time, Leia marveled at the amount of emotion Threepio’s programmers had managed to give him. She wasn’t exactly sure that _only_ Threepio could help her with this one, but his pride would be more of an asset than the stubborn adhesion to the rules that most of the droids she knew had. What she had in mind wasn’t exactly a vital Alliance mission, but she knew Threepio would give it his full attention.

“That’s right.” And from beneath her duvet, she drew out Luke’s old poncho. “I need you to look into how to make something like this. And, Threepio? Don’t tell Luke. Please.”

“But Master Luke is surely the Alliance’s most reliable source of information about his own home planet of Tatooine! Without his help, it could take—“

“Threepio!”

“Yes, Mistress Leia?”

“You can’t tell Luke. Okay? It has to be a surprise.”

For a minute, she thought Threepio might object, but he simply cocked his head and said, “I see.”

***

Leia had never been especially grateful that her mother had taught her to sew. She’d been more interested in politics and literature, in shooting and riding, and the more domestic-seeming of her lessons at the palace had seemed like futile hobbies she’d never need.

Breha Organa could have never imagined her feisty, impatient daughter taking an interest in traditional Tatooinian needlework. But Leia sent her a silent thanks, for making sure her education had been well-rounded.

The cloth came from a cargo run, a special request whispered to a captain who owed Leia’s father a long-ago favor that he’d never been able to repay. The needle and thread came from stock at the base, used to keep the Alliance’s sparse uniforms in service for as long as they could. The color and thickness weren’t quite right, and Leia’s barely-trained stitches weren’t quite even. But when it was done, at least from a distance, the poncho looked a lot like like Aunt Beru’s.

The buttonhole took her more hours than she would ever admit, and more than a few rejected offers by Threepio to find a mender droid who could help her. It ended up a little crooked, but fine. Until she tried to add the button.

It was too big.

“Threepio?”

“Yes, Mistress Leia?”

“I think we need to find another button.”

Luke and Leia’s shared birthday was tomorrow. She’d barely been able to finish the poncho on time. And even though Luke hadn’t said anything about celepating, even though they all forgot the standard date half the time, as worried as they all had to be about the cycle of days and freezing nights on Hoth, Leia wanted to have it ready on time. She wanted to repay Luke somehow—for the poncho. But also for being the closest thing to family she’d had for the past two and a half standard years.

“That buttonhole is approximately 1.783 centimeters wide. This is not a galactic standard size,” Threepio added. “It may take time to find a perfect fit.”

“Please, Threepio?” Leia looked up through the tears she’d been fighting to keep back throughout most of the buttonhole ordeal. “It would mean a lot to Luke. And to me.”

“Well, yes.” Threepio nodded. “I understand, Mistress Leia. Artoo and I will see what we can do.”

***

Leia’s chamber door was open when she came back later that evening, from a meeting of the Alliance High Command that had gone an hour later than it should have.

“Threepio? Artoo?” she called. Both of the droids had her door code. But the voice that answered her, from her bedroom—her _bedroom!_ —was just about the last she wanted to hear.

“Back here, your Worshipfulness.”

“Captain Solo?”

“I hope you don’t mind.” He was sitting on her bed. “Threepio said you were looking for something.”

“Please.” Leia hated how drained her voice sounded. How tired and unconfident and young. “Please get out of my room, Captain Solo.”

“Okay.” He shrugged, and stood.

It would have been better if he’d argued with her, really. At least when they argued, Leia could hold her own. “What do you want, Captain?”

He took a button from his pocket. “Like I said, Goldenrod thought you might need something. If I’m wrong...”

“Let me see that.” She probably should have said “thank you,” but she couldn’t quite believe it wasn’t a joke.

It was a button, though, and when she held it up to the unfinished poncho, it was just the right size for the hole.

“Where did you get this?” It was cast in offblack metal, with intricate designs that didn’t quite seem to be meaningless—but that also meant absolutely nothing to Leia.

Han shrugged. “Off an old jacket. Piece of junk. Doesn’t fit anymore, anyway. It’s the least I can do. For Luke. You know.”

“Thank you. Han.” Leia surprised herself with the way her own voice softened as she said his first name for what she told herself couldn’t possibly have been the first time.

***

She was woken up by a knock on her door on the morning of her twenty-second birthday.

“Who is it?” She blinked sleep from her eyes. Had she really been up so late sewing on that button?

“It’s Luke.” A pause. “I know it’s early. I’ve got a patrol at oh-seven-hundred and... it’s our birthday. So...”

An unexpected warmth welled up in Leia’s heart. She didn’t think he’d really remember, not with everything else going on.

“Just a second.” She twisted her hair into a bun. It wasn’t quite an Alderaanian updo. But then again, it wasn’t quite down.

Luke was standing there, framed by the door in his flightsuit, grinning shyly at her face, but not quite her eyes. “I got you something,” he said. “It’s not much, but...”

Leia laughed. “I got you something too.”

She ran to her bedroom and pulled the first poncho—Luke’s poncho—over her shoulders. The one she’d made was folded and wrapped; she took it from under her bed.

“You first,” Luke said.

“No, you first.”

“Let’s open them at the same time.”

Leia nodded—“Okay.”—and slid her fingernail under the lid of the tiny cargo box that Luke had used for wrapping.

When she saw what was in it, she thought her heart had stopped. She almost surprised herself by breathing.

“This is...” It was Alderaanian blown glass. A pendant, with a leather cord threaded through it. A blue that could have only been made by traditional Alderaanian craftsmen. And even though she hadn’t though of that blue, or these pendants—which were mostly sold as souvenirs at spaceport gift shops—for years, it brought sharp but somehow soothing tears to her eyes. “It’s beautiful.”

“I got it from Hobbie,” Luke half-mumbled. “He went there... to Alderaan, once, on some kind of tour. It’s not... it’s not fine art or anything, but.”

Leia wrapped her arms around him. “It’s perfect.”

Luke didn’t hug her back, though. He couldn’t; he was still holding his package.

“We were supposed to open them together,” Leia said, and made a show of not-quite pouting.

So she watched, then, as he undid the ribbon she’d made from scraps of worn-out old uniforms and folded the wrapping—an old scarf suited to climates much warmer than Hoth’s—aside.

“It’s...” Luke stared at the poncho. “Where did you get this?”

Leia felt herself blush. “I made it.”

Luke looked at it, for a very long time, with a face that was unusually unreadable.

“I...” he started. “I don’t know what to say, Leia. Your Highness!” he corrected himself.

“Leia.”

Luke nodded. “Leia.”

For a breathless moment, Leia was sure she had done something wrong—by reminding him of the aunt he had loved, or the planet he’d been glad to leave behind.

But then he smiled, a beautiful Luke smile, that was as bright as both the suns of Tatooine, and he wrapped the poncho up around his shoulders. “You’re right. It is warm,” he said.

Leia pulled her necklace over her head—a warm bit of Alderaan, up against her heart, only the leather cord an anomaly.

She fingered it. “Where did you get this?” she asked. “It can’t be original. These were always...”

Luke flushed, as if he were embarrassed at having replaced the original chain. “It was broken,” he said. “I know it’s not perfect, but Han had this cord lying around on the Falcon.”

_Han_. Leia looked at the button. “Han,” she whispered. “I should have known.”

“Commander Skywalker?” Luke’s comlink buzzed to life, and he ran a sheepish hand through his mop of hair.

“I have to go.”

“Of course.” Leia kissed him on the cheek—wishing she had done more, glad she hadn’t. “Thank you. And may the Force be with you.”

“You too.”

And again, he was gone.

***

“Threepio?”

“Yes, Master Luke?”

“I’ve got a job for you.”

“Of course, sir. How may I be of service?”

“Do you know what this says?”

Luke held up the button, the one on the poncho that Leia had given him that definitely wasn’t from Tatooine.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t _say_ anything sir. It is not a language as recognized by my programming.”

“But does it _mean_ anything?”

Threepio paused, looking from Luke to the button as if... surprised, maybe, to be asked such a question. Or maybe just surprised Luke didn’t know.

“Why of course, sir! That is a Corellian medallion, typically worn by young men on the occasion of their coming of age. I could be mistaken...” And here he hesitated. “But I do believe that this particular one was once worn by Captain Solo.”

Luke rolled the button over in his fingers, let his fingers trail up, over Leia’s seams.

And then he let himself sink into the poncho. It did make the Hoth nights bearable, after all.


End file.
